Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to computer networks and network security, and more particularly to a method, apparatus, signals, and medium for enforcing a policy on a client computer.
Description of Related Art
The rapid expansion of high-speed Internet connections and the use of the World Wide Web for commerce, entertainment, and education have provided significant benefits to the global user community.
Enterprises have come to increasingly rely on their internal and external networks for information dissemination, service delivery, communications, and data storage, for example, such enterprises have become particularly vulnerable to disruptions to both internal and external network services. Disruptions may occur from, for example, malicious code such as computer viruses that may be transmitted via email or other file transfers from an external network. Enterprises may also need to protect sensitive information in their internal network from access by unauthorized users and/or control or restrict certain client usage of the network, such as access to certain web sites, for example.
Many network administrators protect the integrity of their networks by installing software and devices to prevent disruption or intrusion. Administrators may further require that all computers connected to their network have client security software installed for providing additional client level protection against viruses and intrusions.
Unfortunately users of a client computer may, for one reason or another, disable client security software or alter the configuration such that the client computer is not adequately protected. In some situations a virus or intrusion to the network may be launched by the un-protected client computer, thus affecting other clients on the network and even disrupting the entire network.
There is thus a desire to exercise some control over the configuration of the operation and configuration of security software on networked client computers.